Home Insurance

tails_naf

We're nearing the end of our build, and I've been shopping around for home insurance - when I came accross this little doozy -

If a house is > 100m from a river/lake/coast/etc then it is ok
If a house is between 50m and 100m, then the house must be at least 5m above the water level.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I told the insurance company we have a stream on the land we are building on - and we're approx 60m from this, and 3.5m higher than it.

This stream has never flooded, not even last Novemebr, when every river in the country was tested! Yet it looks like I won't be quoted for.

Surely this is crazy? Anyone else have a small stream neat their new-build - and any ideas on how to proceed.

Note: I did mention the fact it never flooded to them, we had to show this as part of the planning process anyway, but the woman on the end of the phone could only say 'the underwriters set these rules, and I have to follow them'.

dan_d

While this sounds like a knee jerk reaction to last winter's flooding on the part of the insurance companies....it has to be taken into account.

There are fundamental rules that have to be followed, when dealing with building near water. As with many other things in this country (basic financial rules, anybody?!), they were thrown out the window by the planning depts for the last ten years. As an engineer, you learn about the 1 in 100 rule, the 1 in 150 rule...ie you design for the size of flood that is likely to happen once in a hundred years (there are a number of factors for this, and methods). As last winter's floods were devastating, I would imagine that a lot of consultancies are now designing for the 1 in 200 or 1 in 300 year floods - bigger factors, for bigger floods.As for building in flood plains - don't even start me on that!! People don't actually realise how much thought has to be behind structures near water.

I'd imagine all you can do is shop around, and offer to send them your information regarding the river not flooding before. Photos, drawings, flood data, surveys. If you can, maybe offer for them to come out and see the house. The woman on the phone may not have properly understood what you were saying...she just heard "stream", "60m", "3.5m" and that was it. You need to engage with someone who actually understands what they are looking at, and not someone on the other end of the phone (no offense to that woman).I've had a surveyor out in my house recently enough on behalf of the my home insurance company to reprice my quote - they should have panels of people that you can get to come out.

I know that's probably not the most helpful advice, but I can't really think of any other way for you to go.

fishfoodie

I was told by someone that after that last set of floods, the Insurance companies bought Satellite photos of the entire country & set about drawing lines 1km around all the areas flooded, so they could rate these zones as 'do not touch' in future !

In the OPs position, it might be worth them buying a sat photo centered on their site for the worst day of the floods & having it as a simple way of demonstrating that they aren't a bad risk.

tails_naf

A quick update and a follow on question for a legal-eagles out there -

I got another quote from a different insurer, which is even lower, and there were no constraints about house being x above and y away from water, so happy days.

The only question was - is the area a known for flooding / prone to flooding.

My paranoid mind went into overdrive -
To my knowledge it has never flooded - however, imagine the house burned to the ground, or something like that. And when it came to claim, the insurance lads tried to get out of it by looking up records, and finding that in 1923 (or something) that it had in fact flooded there, and move to invalidate the insurance.

Can they do that? i.e. invalidate the policy for an unrelated item than a potential claim? Again I'm not worried about the river actually ever doing damage, it's just I want to make sure I am insured!

muffler

Just state that you are unaware of any flooding problems which would be the case.